Now why would he say a thing like that? Doesn’t that confirm the ownership group, headed by Clay Bennett, are liars?

McClendon (left) and Bennett

Ultimately, it means the game is on. For real. Buckle up. And those in town who want the Sonics to stay should force big smiles across their faces while quietly preparing for battle.

Don’t get sucked into a war of words with McClendon. That only gives him what he wants.

Let’s be polite. Let’s be Seattle. Let’s teach Bennett, McClendon and company about process. Endless, endless process. (And, hopefully while bogging down the OKC effort, somebody else will be looking for an arena/ownership solution).

Let me explain.

But to do that I need your patience for a quick lesson in “Southern,” which is not exactly like “cowboy,” but close enough — sort of like Spanish in Spain vs. Spanish in Mexico.

The only group in the U.S. that it is not only acceptable but socially celebrated to make fun of is white Southern men. What is less well known is that white Southern men know this, and they often exaggerate their “Southerness” because they want to be underestimated. It’s sort of like the old “Saturday Night Live” skit “Unfrozen Caveman Lawyer”:

Seattle, do not fear this simple Okie.

“I’m just a caveman … your world frightens and confuses me. … But there is one thing I do know — when a man like my client slips and falls on a sidewalk in front of a public library, then he is entitled to no less than two million in compensatory damages, and two million in punitive damages.”

I’m from Atlanta but have lived in Seattle since 1999. In recent years, as I’ve become less Southern, I’ve noticed that whenever my buddies from home are trying to con me — such as, into picking up the check — a Southern accent suddenly appears.

And so we have Cousin Aubrey, playing the innocent, good old boy, making statements to The Journal Record of Oklahoma City. The fawning article will surely have folks in OKC who know McClendon falling out of their chairs laughing because the aw-shucks, humble pose he strikes is so far from the real man it’s like … Caveman Lawyer.

McClendon owns a massive ego (not without justification: his leadership at Chesapeake Energy has made a lot of folks wealthy) and not everyone considers him a down-to-earth everyman. There’s a reason the billionaire with the deepest pockets within the ownership group has kept a low-profile … at least until now.

Understand: This was a calculated move. McClendon wants to enrage Seattle. He wants to stoke the resentment. He wants to provoke me into reminding you, mostly liberal Seattle, that McClendon was a big contributor to “Swift Boat Veterans for Truth,” the reprehensible and completely discredited group that distorted and lied about John Kerry’s war record during the 2004 election.

He wants to emphasize an Oct. 31 deadline that isn’t really a deadline. He wants to continue to drive a wedge between the city and the out-of-town ownership group because he knows the NBA will resist them moving the Sonics unless they can prove their position is untenable.

“The people of Seattle kind of look down their nose at us,” he said, playing to his preferred audience in Oklahoma while disingenuously acting like he’s been wounded by Seattle’s skepticism over their intentions — a Seattle skepticism, by the way, he just confirmed.

Duplicitous grandstanding, however, isn’t limited to the Okie cowboys. Mayor Greg Nickels’ recent overture to Bennett about KeyArena was pure theater. Golly Greg, where was your enlightened thinking about renovating KeyArena when Howard Schultz owned the team? And when Gov. Christine Gregoire works the issue, you can feel the calculated fecklessness of a politician who wants to play both sides of the fence.

What’s the end game? People who love the Sonics need to know it’s not as simple as the team bolting for the 2008-09 season if the present ownership group doesn’t get everything it wants.

There are going to be plenty more chapters before this story climaxes. What McClendon has done is simply draw a line in the sand and don a black cowboy hat.